Aja Daniell Johnson Missing: Murdered Mother Feared Husband Would Smash Daughter with Hammer
Photo: Aja Daniell Johnson.
"My husband has threatened to hit my daughters in the head with a hammer and kill them," she wrote.
For now, police can't say if that's what has happened to Aja Johnson, who has been missing since Sunday, when her mother, Tonya Hobbs, was found beaten to death in a Geronimo motor home, about 100 miles southwest of Oklahoma City.
They still don't know where Hobbs is, but Comanche County prosecutors have charged him anyway with first-degree murder for the killing of Tonya Hobbs and kidnapping for the disappearance of her daughter, Aja Daniell Johnson.
Photo: Lester Hobbs.
"He has gone from being a person of interest in this case to a criminal defendant," Comanche County District Attorney Fred Smith said.
Lester Hobbs is not Aja Johnson's biological father.
The medical examiner's office has not determined the official cause of death, but charging documents show Tonya Hobbs suffered blunt force trauma to her body.
In August, Tonya Hobbs sought a protective order against Lester Hobbs, writing in a petition that he threatened her daughters and vowed to kill her if she ever left him.
The order was granted, but the case was dismissed two weeks later when both Tonya Hobbs and her husband failed to appear in court, records show.
Tonya Hobbs traveled with her two daughters to Geronimo on Saturday in an attempt to reconcile with Lester Hobbs, said Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Jessica Brown.
Tonya Hobbs' older daughter stayed with Hobbs' relatives and is not missing.
Oklahoma authorities issued an Amber Alert on Monday and asked law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout in Texas, California and Oregon, where Lester Hobbs has relatives.
Lester Hobbs was last seen driving his wife's 1992 Toyota Paseo with the Oklahoma license plate number 577-BPW. The car has no hubcaps and has plastic covering the rear passenger window.
"Time is not working in our favor in this situation. We need to find this girl as soon as possible," Brown said.
Lester Hobbs has several tattoos, including the letters "LOVE" stitched on the fingers of his left hand and "ROSE" on the fingers of his right hand.
Aja Johnson is 4 feet tall and weighs about 65 pounds. She has brown, shoulder length hair and brown eyes, officials said.
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January 25, 2010 - Aja Daniell Johnson Missing, Her Mother Found Dead; Will They Find 7-Year-Old in Time? (Amber Alert)